Helpdesk

Dear Drugs-Forum readers: We are a small non-profit that runs one of the most read drug information & addiction help websites in the world. We serve over 4 million readers per month, and have costs like all popular websites: servers, hosting, licenses and software. To protect our independence we do not run ads. We take no government funds. We run on donations which average $25. If everyone reading this would donate $5 then this fund raiser would be done in an hour. If Drugs-Forum is useful to you, take one minute to keep it online another year by donating whatever you can today. Donations are currently not sufficient to pay our bills and keep the site up. Your help is most welcome. Thank you.

The death of vbulletin & the birth of a new drugs-forum.com

Drugs-Forum is at an important crossroad and will never be the same again. The situation is similar as 8 years ago. In 2005 we migrated drugs-forum.com from webwiz forum software to vbulletin. Webwiz was simply not good enough for us as a growing community anymore. We needed a better platform, better functions, a more professional design and something with much better security. vbulletin forum software offered that. vbulletin had a long history with drug related forums, as part of vbulletin was coded by Overgrow. Overgrow.com was the largest drug related forum at that time. Running vbulletin since the start of vb in the last century. I built drugs-forum with the hope of it becoming bigger than Overgrow. Moving to it was a very good choice and allowed drugs-forum.com to grow even more and even faster. To a size much bigger than Overgrow was when it got raided and closed down.

On the vbulletin platform I could add whatever function that I could dream up or our members would request. Either I could buy the function somewhere or I could have it created by one of the great developers I have worked with during those years. Or I could just go in the code and modify it to our needs. Nowadays we run 110 addons on top of vbulletin, which makes vbulletin just a small but important part of the site.
Another really cool thing about vbulletin is that the Jelsoft developers listened to my suggestions, so I sent them hundreds. It just got better and better.

Times change for vbulletin
In 2007 the tide started to change for vbulletin as it was bought from Jelsoft by Internet Brands. Internet Brands is a multi-million / multi-billion corporation that buys up successful communities and bleeds them dry for advertising revenue. A quick search on the net will show you that a lot of what they touch turns to mud. They own over 2000 websites which compete with vbulletin websites and earn about 100 million a year in advertising revenue. Which is many times more than vbulletin will ever be worth. After all that I have seen from Internet Brands it is not unthinkable that they seek the destruction or takeover of their rivals, instead of providing solid software.

It did not take long before releases started to include security vulnerabilities, things that sabotage search engine ranking, many thousands of bugs, functions that leaked member data to Internet Brands servers and a lot of things started to happen that drove webmasters into despair. Internet Brands contacted a lot of webmasters to buy up their websites cheap. They did not update their own sites to the latest releases though. Neither did we. Like Internet Brands we still run vbulletin 3, while vbulletin 5 has been out for a year.

I can safely say that we will not upgrade to vbulletin 4 or 5 ever. If you want to experience why then please checkout www.vbulletin.com or any other vb5 forum. Mind that the vbulletin.com forum runs on an advanced and optimized server network and that negative remarks on vb.com are in a hidden forum. Other sites will face even more difficulties running it.

vbulletin gets Hacked
Recently vbulletin.com and vbulletin.org got hacked repeatedly, due to a number of security vulnerabilities in vbulletin 4 and 5 and one issue in vb3. As a result other websites like macrumors.com got hacked as well. The private details of macrumors its 800.000 members were compromised. Internet Brands staff denied details of the hack and did not email us.

We patched the vbulletin 3 issue. Over the years we have experienced attacks many times and as a result our server security is extremely high. Security is essential for a drug related website. After all our members post sensitive data and we want to keep that secure.

As time goes by vbulletin gets ever more outdated. Staying on vbulletin 3 is not an option. Sooner or later the old technology it relies on will become a security risk. This includes End of Life server software and outdated third party software. Time is ticking.

Outdated functionalityAs the net keep revolutionizing itself. everyone gets used to better and better functions. Social media like Facebook are fighting for your time. Information oriented website have gotten pretty good in delivering the answers you seek. And at the same time drugs-forum in all its excellence relies on highly outdated features, buggy notification. Something has gotta give here.

I am not thinking about killing the site. Its the forum software that is dying. The site needs a new platform, because the current forum software is nearly dead.
My blog post intends to illustrate why we can not afford to stay on vbulletin and a migration away from vbulletin is necessary. I think this is needed to explain because a migration is costly and we already are in a problematic financial situation.

Makes sense.. a good comparison for me is like owning a Mac with a Power PC processor. OS X stopped supporting that chip with OS X 10.5.9 and all the new apps require the new modern Intel Chip on the newer OS's. As much as I spent on that damn G5, it is now collecting dust in my closet.

You have to stay current, whatever the cost. At some point it is going to end up costing you more to keep this old software viable. That point seems like it has long passed.

This board has the heart and souls of thousands of people all over globe, poured into it. We need to keep this baby current and relative. If that means adopting some new attitudes regarding rules and safety, to accommodate the software, so be it.

I think some integration with Facebook and other social media platforms is a good idea. Perhaps allowing members to have an alias for sensitive posts that require anonymity would be a good idea. I don't know the details about all this as I am not privy to what these upgrades would consist of, but whatever you decide I am sure it will be in the best interest of the longevity of this site and the information within, that has saved so many lives and helped many others to live healthier.

My brain is here for the picking if needed. Just put back whatever take when your done please :vibes:

Regarding Facebook & privacy: Privacy, data protection and identity shielding has always been a top priority for DF. While we will certainly get more social features and social networking features for those who opt-in, but privacy will be kept in mind.

But let's not get into what features are coming. I will be posting more blogs to cover that topic.

Sounds like a tricky situation, how to keep everything the way it is, with the community and all, yet roll into something new. I've only just joined here, and I think it is great, and can only get better! Looking to donate when I get off this winter layoff!

I'd certainly have to say that 'privacy' is definitely not facebook's top priority, as they tend to want us to share everything with everyone else, almost as a default setting.

It means that the Forum is looking forward to a major but subtle overhaul that will retain the look & feel but will add functionality, streamline use & navigation & bring it kicking ass into the 21st Century. Having played around with the beta a little I can say that it's looking good!

I suppose one would be most concerned about security matters. So often does it happen that the entire user database of a resource falls in the wrong hands. Even when the passwords are too tightly encrypted, so much sensitive information could be retrieved. Email addresses are gold for these spammers.

Guess the people of this forum know much about the ins and outs of technology

That's a pretty hard question to answer, because it involves a lot of custom software development which means paying the hours that developers work. To create custom importers, a design, essential functionality. There are also a lot of addons and software packages that I need to buy. Asides from the essentials there also are a lot of functions that will improve the income of the site and therefore are a wise investment. And then there are various functions that will greatly increase the popularity and usefulness of the site. So its a mix of many things, which all add up to a total in the neighborhood of $6-11k depending on how you count.
It's quite a large undertaking. It's clear that the result will be a massive improvement of the site.

I remember back in the late 90's computer secuirty was pretty lax, and a moderatly experienced person could hack into most personal computers with not much trouble. I rather liked those teenage internet days ""was interesting to see stuff become better and more secure" It also makes me think that i should of purchased a few dozen domain names back in the early 90's. ""for profit" Anyways When the reputation system is auto detected with pupil dilation, body temperature, persperation, heart rate, and body movement.. That is when i will probably just give up on everything internet letated. Untell then i like how things are progressing.. I can say that i did see DF from the very early stages of development. Push forward :crazy

Most companies don't like to admit it, when I owned hitmans gold, a traffic exchange site that died years ago, someone stole our database, it was encrypted but we chose not to tell anyone either. We were mainly honest, but security , theres always a ransom, or a pay off if you get the database :S